Don’t get me wrong I would be a happy panda if they just say “num Lock isn’t allowed” or make it unusable then again you took only a small bit of text down there because the whole thing looks a bit different but everyone can read this for themselfs. To me it looks like “Don’t cry me a river if numlock function is crashing your game!”.
The less I look at my cooldowns the more I’m able to look at animation, avoid voidzones, go sightseeing and so on and so forth. On top of it it’s easier to fa… watch family friendlyy films while playing.
As a last thought on it without thinking to deeply: Why don’t you forbid to bind numkeys in the controller scheme?
Holy Aura? I think auras can work fine in LE because there’s an active/inactive component to holy Aura. I don’t think they’re against Aura types skills I think they just want to find a way to not make them not JUST turn on and forget it.
I think this is when it will happen definitively.
But without the ability enforce a moratorium on num lock, there’s no point in declaring one. That’s why Sarno said what he did:
They currently can’t prevent people from using it so they aren’t going to say “thou shalt not!”.
I know a lot of Betas that changed stuff on release that was normal in Beta and people got nuts about it. If they just make up their minds and say “We don’t want players to use said mechanic!” there will be maybe less vidoes from contentcreators advertising for it and make it a staple of the game. Then sometime later, because people don’t get that beta isn’t release and things can change, screams of agony will rise and babyrage takes it cause.
The sooner people know exactly if they can get used to it or should’nt get used to it because it’s declared as cheating and you’ll never show up on a leaderboard (or whatever) the simpler the transition is. They still need no solution now and can do something about it later but it’s set in stone then.
True, though you could still have the same effect by just holding down the relevant buttons on your keyboard (since that’s what the num lock trick emulates).
Yes, Holy Aura is another example of a perma buff that pretty boring mechanically. They did however add the interaction of pressing it again to release another mechanic which is better. Enchant weapon is also another one which I find the idea of it being interesting but mechanically it’s boring, it’s not engaging enough therefore the addition of adding the auto cast even in the ability is kinda a sign how it doesn’t fit the theme of the game that they talk about. I guess having an option for 1 active buff per class isn’t a big deal, we will see how this is going to progress in the future. I just don’t want the game to become buffs and autocasting meta.
Yea, some people just don’t want to bother with 5 active skills. I don’t. Even without using numlock, I just won’t spec the skills then. I use 1 active damage skill and maybe 1 movement skill. All others that I spec into have to have some sort of passiveness about them or I just won’t bother.
Maybe this is why my preferred class is Beastmaster with the summons. I don’t even use the active skill they have when they are summoned. I also like Rogue though, because they can destroy things with just 1 or 2 buttons.
It’s completely fair for people to have a preferred way of playing but I think there is an addition to this:
which is “don’t cry me a river if your build uses less than 5 active skills and can’t get through all of the content”. Given EHG’s stance on active skills I suspect they will be balancing around the expectation of players using all of the active skills available to them.
(Not an attack against you or your preferred playstyle darkdeal, just an observation. Also I guess minion skills might fall outside this)
That wont happen though. Skills in this game aren’t set up to be “combos” as much. There are some that build so that they have 3 or 4 “active” skills they use just to maintain a passive buff to minmax the damage on their REAL active skill.
The way the game is though, they either have a skill that is out of balance and super powerful, in which players just use that; or they balance the skills and thus hitting multiple active skills doesn’t impact your dps much if at all, so people just use one skill.
If numlock goes away, I guarantee everyone will drop down to using 2 skills except for maybe a rotation for bosses (basically treating it like the minmax damage rotation on the dummy). Even that rotation may not be worth it. VK caster’s won’t exist anymore.
I mean, its pretty much the reason everyone HATES Sigils isn’t it? It can’t be put on numlock for autocast because its CD is so low it will just always use all your mana.
I’m not a big fan of running all active skills. I’d love some londer duration buff skills you press every now and then, a choice of “Oh shit!” buttons, some movement stuff and dmg skills. I already dislike to play Spellblade because right now you need two skills to stack dmg the best way and I hate one of said skills.
I’m on the simple side of things like playing ww barb in D3… gets stuff done and you don’t need to manage to much. LE isn’t that troubblesome but it lacks easy laid back skills from my point of view and people simulate this playstyle by autocast. Just make a single node besides the starting node and everyone who wants to dump one skillpoint get’s an “autocast on CD” node that way and everyone can setup stuff like they want to.
I feel all of this brings us to the devs’s vision. Who should play the game and how should it be played?
If they want a game for a massive audience, autocast is a desirable feature. If they want a passionate niche audience, autocast can disappear. If they want an easy to play game, autocast must be a thing. If they want a game that requires a technical playstyle, then autocast should not be possible.
It’s really a matter of vision. How do they want their game to evolve, towards what kind of audience? There is no good or bad answer, the key is their vision.
And so the challenge for EHG is if they don’t want autocast in their game they need to do something to make people stick with it despite the lack of autocast or they need to accept that people might get bored/frustrated and not play. I’m not even trying to say their stance on autocast is right or wrong, just that they seem pretty set on it so far and that is going to affect how things are balanced whether we like it or not.
That sounds like a reasonable solution to me if they decide to allow autocast and I’ll be interested to see if EHG do something like this. I know they already have a node like this in at least 1 skill but it requires a few other nodes to get to so it’s a bit more of an investment.
Yeah this is where I am on it as well.
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I’ve already stated in one of my earlier posts that the devs can do whatever they want since it’s their game so this response is more general. I think discussions like this can be useful as they might start with a particular vision but their engagement with the community might also lead them to adjust certain views and make the consider questions or issues that might not have come up internally. Or maybe that’s just the idealised world in my head.
I still don’t understand why there is this view that it needs to be either or though. The reality is that the only people who care about how others play the game are likely to be the competitive types pushing for ladder. And that’s perfectly understandable. So make passives weaker so that the competitive types don’t feel they’re being disadvantaged by other players being able to compete with “less skill”. And everyone should be happy.
We’re already a niche gaming genre with some stiff competition both currently and on the near horizon. So I would think the best approach would be to accommodate as many players as possible without bending over backwards too much or diluting the overall offering. You want to push 5 buttons in a tight rotation that’s timed to the split second to maximize DPS? Go for it buddy. You want to sit back after a long day with your little sprog on your knee and hit as few keys as possible? Multi-task away mate! Just don’t expect to be an OP monster build.
It just feels like sometimes people get so focused on what they enjoy about the game that it feels a little exclusionary.
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That really isn’t the point though. It’s more of a question if auto-casting is something that the developers want for their game and the answer is no. Yet it’s a workaround that still exists and players actively exploit the benefits of it which can delude the vision of the game developers want for their game.
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I think it’s also important to look at what skills typically get used with the “autocast” “feature”. There are certain commonalities.
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They usually cost fairly little mana compared to total mana pool. They won’t drain your mana pool if you go afk for a coffee for a few minutes.
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They have a duration that’s almost as long as their cooldown, or the same as. I don’t imagine you’d put an ability on autocast that has a 2 minute CD and a 10 second duration. But if it has a 15 second duration and a 15 second cooldown, refreshing it just seems like “busywork”, rather than engaging.
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They usually have a functionality that doesn’t require interaction with it. You don’t put meteor or other aimed abilities on autocast. The abilities you would use it on are un-aimed and typically an “aoe around character”, like wandering spirits, abyssal echoes, etc. Therefore they’re not abilities that really require much thought, you just want them up at all times, or sometimes it’s even damaging to your character if they’re not at 100% uptime (like spirits), lowering your damage output.
Example: Sigils of Hope. People don’t put it on autocast. Why? It has a very high mana cost and very low to no cooldown, must shorter than its duration, so it is unnecessary and unproductive to just have it auto-cast.
Personally I think abilities like these are not particularly engaging or interesting, and so if they remain in the game, they should have an auto-cast option in the skill tree. I think if it wasn’t for the num-lock, most people would take it just for the QoL of it.
Point: Skills people usually use numlock on are not the “engaging” ones, or ones that require aiming or mana management, or specific timing (CD). They’re the “busywork” ones.
Edit: I should mention that I LIKE aura type abilities. I find them fun, and I hope that they do stay in the game and have an “autocast” feature added that is supported.
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I thought the discussion had become a little broader than that from the prior posts. i.e. whether that decision is inclusive or not and what it means in broader terms for the game’s potential.
I won’t belabour the point though. 
I don’t think it’s boring. In fact, in the case of how Holy Aura works I think it’s very strategic in a very different way from on/off skills. In it’s ‘inactive’ state it’s a mild buff and then you have to decide when to harness the full power since it doesn’t last very long and you can’t ever make it “permanent” like werebear form or other things like that. I also don’t think that having a few of these skills peppered around the numerous others is a bad thing. I definitely agree it shouldn’t become auraboards or anything like that but a few? I don’t think that’s a problem.
And I’m going to bet you really hate the idea of a retaliation build. 